Diagnosing David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest is usually touted by its fans as being a postpostmodern opus of unparalleled genius; this reaction is inconvenient for me insomuch as I don’t actually agree. More specifically, I have difficulty with the way Infinite Jest’s thematic content is framed by the techniques used to express it, despite the fact that Wallace’s verbal acrobatics are the stuff of legend. This paper argues that the style in which Infinite Jest is written consistently undermines the thematic considerations being simultaneously addressed, creating a dissonance that interferes with the reader’s ability to engage the novel on the emotional and personal level Wallace apparently craves. Infinite Jest is conceptually dense and requires significant commitment from its readers, as most “serious works of fiction” tend to do. It concerns itself with addiction and recovery, self-control and excess, the nature of communication and the pitfalls of ironic detachment. But Wallace’s trump card is not in thematics but in the nature of their deployment, and as a result readers are thrown instantly into a world riffled with footnotes, neologisms, and unexpected abbreviations. The book is chronologically disorganized, its prose unpredictable, and the grammar often stuffed to the ears with clauses meant to disorient; these disruptions are the hallmarks of Wallace’s work, much more so than his numerous and recurring conceptual interests, and are at the root of my criticism. He distracts, digresses, and details his readers often to the point of frightening them away altogether, and he does it for a lot of very good reasons. But are these reasons good enough? My main concern is that as much as it is possible to see many of these digressive tactics parried by the book’s thematic undercurrents, there still seems to be a serious disjunction between what the novel is saying and how the novel is saying them. Although Wallace is of the strict and open opinion that postmodern irony has passed its peak and that “avant-garde irony and rebellion have become dilute and malign” (E Unibus Pluram), this doesn’t seem to stop him from using it and other devices that inhibit the novel’s efforts to posit a world in which ironic detachment is a pitfall and a danger. Since Wallace has proclaimed that “really good work probably comes out of a willingness to disclose yourself” (E Unibus Pluram), is there any acceptable way to defend his technique without positing a sort of disclosure-inhibiting mask

David Foster Wallace on the Good Life

This chapter presents David Foster Wallace's views about three positions regarding the good life—ironism, hedonism, and narrative theories. Ironism involves distancing oneself from everything one says or does, and putting on Wallace's so-called “mask of ennui.” Wallace said that the notion appeals to ironists because it insulates them from criticism. However, he reiterated that ironists can be criticized for failing to value anything. Hedonism states that a good life consists in pleasure. Wallace rejected such a notion, doubting that pleasure could play a fundamental role in the good life. Lastly, narrative theories characterize the good life by fidelity to a unified narrative -- a systematic story about one's life, composed of a set of ends or principles according to which one lives. Wallace believed that these theories turn people into spectators, rather than the participants in their own lives

David Hering, David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form

David Hering, David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form Bloomsbury Academic, 216. Pp. 216. ISBN: 9781628920550 Paolo Pitari David Hering’s David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form begins with an original thesis: all of Wallace’s fiction oscillates between monologism and dialogism in a process revolving around “the continual risk of a master discourse engendered by the degree of Wallace’s authorial presence” (7). The thesis shakes one of the fundamental anchors of Wallace criticism, i.e. the readin..

Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, Freedom and the Self: Essays on the Philosophy of David Foster Wallace

Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, Freedom and the Self: Essays on the Philosophy of David Foster Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 192pp.  ISBN: 9780231161527. Paolo Pitari Independent scholar Freedom and the Self: Essays on the Philosophy of David Foster Wallace is the second collection of essays in Wallace studies that approaches the author from a philosophical standpoint, and most of the critics and students who look forward to reading this book have read the first, Ges..

La normalidad democrática de David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Pluram” is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that could be considered as inspiration for Wallace’s alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernism."E Unibus Pluram" de David Foster Wallace es un relato del predominio de la ironía destructiva a fines del siglo XX. Tratando de liberarse del solipsismo provocado por el relativismo posmoderno, Wallace abrazó la sinceridad como la piedra angular del zeitgeist del nuevo milenio. Este artículo ofrece un análisis de dos fuentes de influencia destacadas que podrían considerarse como inspiración para la alternativa de Wallace a la ironía posmoderna: el trascendentalismo estadounidense y las investigaciones filosóficas de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Se hace con la intención de promover la comprensión del significado cultural de la obra del autor para la generación de escritores que siguieron su estela, y demostrar cómo la recuperación de los ideales románticos puede ser la clave para trazar la naturaleza del cambio de paradigma hacia el posmodernismo

The Existential Philosophy of David Foster Wallace

It is no secret that philosophy and literature are often closely intertwined: beginning with works as old as Plato’s dialogues, philosophers have always seen the merit in utilizing fiction to share philosophy with both their contemporaries and with the general public. The most prominent existentialists are perhaps the most famous for using literature as a vehicle for their philosophical ideas: Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre all published some kind of fiction, through parables, novels, plays, and so forth. Likewise, I will argue in this thesis that renowned writer David Foster Wallace was not only a writer—though his career choice reflects his status as an author, the works he produced reflect his status as a philosopher